Abstract
Scientists and clinicians wield the immense power of defining reality and producing facts.1 Although no person can truly claim objectivity, scholars enjoy the authority of expertise and cultural capital, a combination that provides them with near-deified credence. When doctors and scientists, such as Carolus Linnaeus (a Swedish naturalist) and Johan Blumenbach (a German doctor and anthropologist), attempted to taxonomise the world during the Enlightenment era by consolidating their observations using the travel logs of European colonisers,2 their proposals for biologically distinct human varieties, or hierarchised races, became entrenched as knowledge and legitimised ongoing practices of imperialism.
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